Late for the Sky
by The X-Woman
Summary: The words had all been spoken, but somehow the feeling still wasn't right... and still we continued on through the night.


Disclaimer: No, they don't belong to me… yet.  However, when my plan to conquer the world is completed, not only will every one of your little, miniscule lives become mine, but so will the copyrights of everything related to the X-Files will be mine as well. Muha ha ha ha. Um, *ehm*, excuse that minor outburst.  However, for now, the 'Files still belong to Carter and Co, Davy, and the Fair Gillian.  Also, the song "Late for the Sky" belongs to Jackson Browne.  

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Type: alternate universe, post- "Momento Mori", song fic, MSR, character death, angst, Mulder POV

Rating: PG-13

Spoilers: cancer arc, "Small Potatoes"

Summary:  The words had all been spoken, but somehow the feeling still wasn't right.  And still we continued on through the night.

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 "Late for the Sky"

by the_xwoman

http://geocities.com/starlightstudio1121 

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**_The words had all been spoken,_**

**_But somehow the feeling still wasn't right._**

**_And still we continued on through the night._**__

            I turn in bed, but her strawberry blonde hair is all I can see, her back to me, her hair spilling over the pillow.  I run my eyes over her striking hair, the curve of her neck, her shoulders, the dip in her side, her soft, pale legs disappearing under the blankets, shadowing her outline.

            Her bare, pale skin reflects on the streetlight spilling through the windows, reflecting and filling the room with it's own glow, as if it was the moonlight itself.

            But, it is a blinding moonlight.  An uncomfortable, bleeding light that seems to swallow the room whole, wrap it in a blanket of fire and try to smother everything within it: including me.

             Her breathing is erratic; she doesn't sleep either.  Of course.  It wasn't meant to be.  It was… forced.  I had never imagined it to be so.  I had imagined it to be magical: freeing, almost.  I had always imagined it would be like being born again, born into another person whom my heart and soul and mind would forever be one with.  It would be sweet, like eating the sweetest piece of fruit, perfectly ripened, eaten on the warmest summer day.

            But, it was nothing like that at all.  It was… bittersweet?  No, not even that.  No, just bitter.

**Tracing our steps from the beginning**

**_Until they vanished into the air,_**

**_Trying to understand how our lives had led us there._**__

            "Mulder?"  Her voice erupted into a small, Scully-like smile: inconspicuous, unnoticeable by anyone that doesn't know how Dana Scully smiles.  A smile only I could see, that would never betray the professionalism that she shrouded over her frail shoulders.

            "Scully!"  I was surprised.  "What are you doing here?  I thought you were at the hospital…"

            The cancer has taken its toll: fair skin paler than usual, sunken eyes that seem to shrink her face, the dulling of her once bright, ocean, dancing eyes.  

            "I did, but I… canceled."

            "Cancelled?"  She came into the house, and I let the door slip shut behind her, bolting the door, slightly cautious of anything she might not be telling me.  She saw my nervous movement and her faint smiled faded completely.

            "Cancelled, Mulder.  I… I wanted to come here."

            I frown, unconvinced.  It still doesn't feel right.  Doesn't feel like Scully.  She still senses my skepticism, and she moves to the couch, sitting.  All I could do was offer her a drink, to which she pulled out a bottle of champagne she had somehow managed to hide from my sight.

            "What's that for?"  I asked, somewhat taken aback.

            "Just returning an old favor."  She told me.

**Looking hard into your eyes,**

**_There's nobody I've ever known._**

**_Such an empty surprise,_**

**_To feel so alone._**__

            Technically, no, she was not my first.  But, in many ways she was.  She was my first true love, my first that I would die for, that I would suffer for, that I would be tortured for.  

            But, the favor was not returned, was it?  That's why I am laying here, looking at her back, my eyes tracing her hips, stomach, my fingers tangling in her hair, attempting to get lost in her, forever, an attempt only because it can never be succeeded, because she would never allow it.  She would never allow me to become part of her like that forever; my being could never be tattooed onto her own because neither of us could ever move on, when she is gone.  When the sickness overtakes her and she leaves, leaves me behind to just watch.  Watch her leave me forever.

**Now for me some words come easy**

**_But I know they don't mean that much_**

**_Compared with the things that are said when lovers touch._**__

            I set a champagne glass before her and she pried open the cork, holding the champagne bottle before her as the foam seeped over and splashed the carpet below.  She didn't seem to care about the mess she was making, if she even noticed it.  As she poured our glasses, her eyes would sneak looks up at me as if she thought I wasn't looking.  A flirtation… a lonely woman's form of foreplay.  And I was falling for her, hook, line and sinker.  And, hell, she knew it too.

            I took the glass that she held out to me and we raised them, their gentle clacking sound billowing through the room, streams of champagne spilling down the sides, staining Scully's white skin a light pink.  She smiled, broadly this time, a smile that anyone could see as a smile.

            "To us."

            I tilted my head at her, and after a moment of silence, and nodded.

            "To us."

            We sipped.  Then, she looked at me, intensely.

            "I lied."

            I paused, narrowing my eyes.  "About what?"

             "I didn't skip my appointment." I was taken aback.  "It was moved to a few days ago.  I didn't want to tell you until the test results were back."

            _Something's wrong._  "Why?"

            She seemed sobered now, her smile faded.  She pushed her glass away and became Scully again, all business.

            "The cancer has entered my blood stream, Mulder."

            The silence filled the air, the surprise and sadness and horror was almost palpable, and I could feel it enter my lungs; fill my body with every breath.  I stopped breathing.

            "It's critical, Mulder."  She knew my thoughts.  "The doctor is giving me maybe a month.  He didn't want me to leave the hospital but…" She laughed.  "I don't want to die there, Mulder.  If I'm going to die, I want to die with you."

            I was still holding my breath, but her words seemed to soften the air around me.  I opened my mouth but there was nothing, _nothing_ I could say to her.  There was nothing I could say this time to make it all better.  There was nothing that would make it all better, short of a miracle straight from God.  And I had stopped believing in those long ago.

            "Is…" I found words.  "Is there anything I can do?"

            I was if she had been waiting for those very words.  She smiled.

            "Get me drunk."  

            "_Drunk?_" This wasn't Scully.

            "Yes, drunk, Mulder."  She leaned toward me.  "Help me live.  Just for tonight.  I want to live before I finally die."

            So there was something that would make it all better.

            I poured her another glass.

**_I never knew what I loved in you_**

**_I don't know what you loved in me._**

**_Maybe the picture of somebody you were hoping I might be._**__

"This feels wrong."  I told her.

            She shook her head at me.  "What?"

"Celebrating.  Celebrating your death."

"Death?"  She looked alarmed.  "My death?"

I sighed, exasperated.  "Well, what is this then?"

"Celebrating life."  She poured another glass.  "I'm not dead yet.  And you are far from it.  Right now, I am living.  Looking around me and seeing everything about life that is wonderful.  Mulder, what is wonderful in life?"

I sighed, shrugging.  "I guess… having fun.  Being with family.  People you care about."

She laughed at me.  "That's life to you, Mulder?"  She shook her head and leaned closer to me.  "No, I mean… what is _life_.  What makes it wonderful?  The feelings, emotions… what makes human life wonderful?"

            I leaned back against the couch.  This was part of Scully I had never seen before.  A part that I had come so close to never meeting.  So, this was the Scully looking death in the eye.  This was the Scully I was losing.

            "Life is pleasure."  I told her.  "Life is a spring day.  Life is a sunny day after two weeks of rain.  Life is sleeping in your room after a week of hotel beds.  Life is realizing that you haven't fallen in love yet because you already have."  I stopped there.

"Love?"  She was on her fifth glass.  "I was never in love until I met you."

            I was only on my second, but her words still didn't surprise me.  As weak as she was, she drove all the way down here, bought pink champagne, was getting drunk with me.  Love?  Liquid love, from a pink bottle of fermented dreams.  Had I only guessed.  Instead, I shrugged and set my glass down.

            "I love you too, Scully."

            She laughed this time, a full-blown laugh of a woman that has understood too much and is misunderstood even more.  "No, Mulder.  I am _in love_ with you!"

            "That's what I meant."  I said.  And I did mean it.  At the time.__

            She set her glass down.

**Awake again, I can't pretend**

**_And I know I'm alone_**

**_And close to the end_**

**_To the feelings we've known._**__

            I meant it at the time.  So, when she took off her clothes and I touched her, gently, timidly, and looked into her eyes and kissed her deeply… hell, I meant that too!  I'm sure I did!  At the time.

            I roll onto my back and start to count those little glow in the dark sticker stars on my ceiling, but their glow is dimming and keeping track of them grows harder and harder.  It's not sleep that reaches for me, clouding my vision and making it more difficult to count.  No, it's the memories, the visuals that won't leave me alone, that keep showing up and waving themselves in front of me and trying to convince me that maybe I _do_ love her… or maybe trying to convince me I don't.

            I guess I'm supposed to find that out.

**How long have I been sleeping?** **How long have I been drifting alone through the night?**             "What favor?" It was the third time I had asked.  She glanced up at me with glazed eyes; glazed from drunkenness or cancer, or maybe they were always like that, and my eyes were glazed too, so I never noticed hers.  She pushed fire from her face and blinked a few times.  "You said you were repaying a favor." 

            "Oh."  She nodded.  "Oh, it was long ago.  And it wasn't really you, it was somebody disguised as you but…" She laughed again.  "You – he – brought me champagne.  And I almost fell in love with him."

            Eddie Van Blunht.  I was sober enough to remember him.  She was repaying me for a favor I never gave.  

            "But _he_ brought you champagne.  _He _was the one you almost fell in love with.  Not me.  Why are you repaying me for something he did?"

            She emptied the bottle into the glass, watching the last drops gather at the bottom.  "I'm not repaying you for the wine, or the fall.  I'm repaying you for _stopping_ it."  She set the bottle down and drained the wine from the glass.  "The worst mistake I never made.  All thanks to you."

            I didn't know what to say.  I don't think there was anything to say.  

            "Make love to me, Mulder."

            "You're drunk."

            She laughed.  "Drunk, in love, dying of a terminal illness.  How can you say no?"

            "Scully, no."  I said firmly.  "Maybe we should call it a night, though.  You can have the bed-"    

            "Mulder, are you really going to let yourself spend another night alone?  With the woman you love, who may not even wake up tomorrow, sleeping in the next room… and you would spend your night alone."

            She was right.  I knew that.  Drunk or not.

**How long have I been dreaming I could make it right**

**_If I closed my eyes and tried with all my might_**

**_To be the one you need._**__

            I open my eyes because I can't dream.  I don't think I'll ever dream again.  What's the point?  Dreams lie.  At least, to me.  I've never had a dream come true.  Even now, lying next to the woman I thought I loved, trying to help her live, just a little, before she died.  And I failed.

            The bed moves and her pale, slim body sits up, pushing herself to her feet and stumbling toward the bathroom.  She closes the door before turning on the light, trying to make me think she thinks I am asleep.  I close my eyes, trying to block out the light seeping through the bottom of the door, like a wound.  I try to block out the sounds of her digging through the medicine cabinet, because I know what she is looking for.  And I am not going to stop her.

            I close my eyes again and wonder what could have been done differently.  Wondering if I had never let her meet Duane Barry.  Maybe, we wouldn't be here right now.  Me, lying naked, ashamed in my own bed; she, digging through a cabinet for the only drug that will ease the pain.  Me, wondering how I could have changed this.  Wondering why I couldn't fix it.  Why I couldn't fix anything.

**_How long have I been sleeping?_**

**_How long have I been drifting alone through the night?_**__

            I didn't feel her get back into bed, because I had heard the water run, had heard the medicine cabinet close.  The light had been turned off before she opened the door and stumbled back to the bed, and as she climbs back in, I reach out and gather her into my arms.

            She doesn't fight.  How could she?  She has no reason to.  

            I wanted her, I needed her.  Needed to feel her close to me, needed to hold her and wish that things never happened the way they had to and that maybe, maybe, there was a God.

            I pull the cover back over us and wrap my arms around her back, and she buries her head into my chest, pressing her body closely against mine.  I can feel her chest rise and fall with every breath she takes; I can feel her clutched fist against my neck.  

            Even the falsity of it, the regret that each of our hearts are heavy with, it is the only way to end it.  The only way that is real enough, the only way that makes any sense at all.  I asked her what I could do.  She told me she wanted to die with me.  I told her I didn't want to spend the night alone.

            She had found the same bottle in the medicine cabinet that I had found only minutes before.  The brand new bottle of sleeping pills… I had only taken half.  I left the other half for her.

            Her breath against my chest is weaker, slower, gentle puffs of life against me.  She's not a strong as me, so it happens more quickly.  This saddens me, in way; of all the people I have ever known, it was Scully that deserved so much to live.  So much to drink life of everything.  She didn't deserve _this_: to suffer, to fall in love with me, to end her life drunk on sex and pain and fermented love from the general store down the street.  But, if life has proven anything to me, it's that people never get what they deserve.  Which is why Scully dies an artificial, quiet, painless death in the arms of a man that she should have loved, and I die a artificial, quiet, painless death in the arms of a woman that I had to get drunk before she would ever open herself up, ever show me even part of who she was, and what she felt.  She doesn't deserve a quiet death; she deserves the death of a warrior, a death that all will remember.  And I, I do not deserve a painless one.  And neither of us deserves a death so artificial. 

Her breathing has stopped, and I feel mine fading now as well.  I let my eyelids flutter shut and pull her lifeless body closer to my own, waiting for oblivion to overtake me and finally, after so many years, give me some peace.  Give us some peace.  I can feel the rising sun trying to force it's way through the closed blinds, trying to tattle on our dirty secret that by midday, when Walter Skinner calls my apartment and Scully's and gets no answer at either, and finally comes down to my home to find our bodies, entwined and lifeless, will be known to the entire world.  Our dirty little secret, the single secret that will not die with us.  

            And, I die with regrets.  So many that I wonder if even death will bring me peace.  I pray for an afterlife, for Scully's sake, and no afterlife, for mine. 

            We beat the sun, and I fall into oblivion just as it breaks through the blinds, showering our still bodies with its truth and light.  But, it took much too long for the truth and the light to reach us.  Too late.

How long have I been reaching for that morning flight 

**_Through the whisper of promises and the change in light_**

**_From the bed where we both lie_**

**_Late for the sky._**__


End file.
